From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,2acf1f37f6bdc5f2 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!postnews.google.com!g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: "Steve Whalen" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Licences Date: 15 Oct 2005 02:39:05 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <1129369145.676257.240480@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> References: <1129303351.767662.191580@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <80733$434fd8b0$49951a4$23477@ALLTEL.NET> NNTP-Posting-Host: 68.238.132.58 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" X-Trace: posting.google.com 1129369151 17409 127.0.0.1 (15 Oct 2005 09:39:11 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 09:39:11 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: G2/0.2 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.11) Gecko/20050728,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com; posting-host=68.238.132.58; posting-account=GBMmzA0AAABrZ0dHOASa3b2Cdf-RliH9 Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:5686 Date: 2005-10-15T02:39:05-07:00 List-Id: Marc A. Criley wrote: > Lucretia wrote: > > After having waited absolutely ages for a GNAT from AdaCore, I was > > supremely pissed off that they GPL'd it, as the extra tools are only > > available through them. Now, I'm working on some code that wanted to > > (attempt to ;-D) make money on. > > The GPL doesn't stop you from selling your product. And for as much > money as you want to ask and can get. > I suspect that to most of the several million computer programmers on the planet, listing all of the special cases in which the GPL does NOT interfere with what most programmers would call "making money" on a program, is misleading. Most programmers are NOT open source programmers, do NOT ship source code with the programs they sell, and would find the requirements of the GPL unacceptable for what is generally called "proprietary" software. The universe of professional programmers who write proprietary (closed source) programs to whom the GPL is NOT an impediment is very small in relation to the universe of computer programmers who write proprietary software. Since we are no longer permitted to include AdaCore's runtime library from their "free" Ada compiler when selling a binary only distribution, I suspect the original author was correct in guessing that AdaCore's GPL compiler is NOT appropriate for the intended use. The only legal way to do a binary only distribution with an AdaCore Ada 2005 compiler is to buy support from AdaCore. Why do people keep pretending that AdaCore's removal of the GMGPL license exception from their runtime isn't a really big change for the Ada community? It really does make a difference to a lot of individual programmers (and thus to Ada). Programmers who cannot afford to pay AdaCore (or who choose not to) now must rely on significantly out of date versions of compilers and tools in order to "make money" on a program they wrote. Getting people to use Ada as much as possible is one of the reasons the DOD required the versions of GNAT they paid for to be free for ALL uses including proprietary. AdaCore apparently doesn't feel there's enough original "paid for by the DOD" content left over from the original DOD contract in their Ada 2005 compiler to adhere to the spirit of the original DOD contract requirement that there should be a free Ada compiler available which allows proprietary code development for the good of the Ada community. The AdaCore removal of the GMGPL exception IS bad for Ada and I wish people would quit pretending it isn't. No longer having a reliable + free + up to date + easy to install Ada compiler makes "Ada proselytizing" much harder (I don't consider having to compile your own compiler and libraries from CVS as being "easy to install"). By way of introducing sharp programmers to Ada, I used to set up a GNAT compiler on Windows or OS/2 or whatever machine a programmer used as their primary development environment. I would do this so he or she could learn Ada without any effort on their part to find and install all the necessary pieces to write useful code that they could run on their main machine. I know of at least one programmer who wrote and sold a program after I got him interested in Ada via the GNAT compilers. That cannot happen anymore because a binary only program cannot be "sold" from the AdaCore GPL compiler (the program that was sold that I'm referring to here did NOT generate enough money to pay for an AdaCore support contract, though it did pay for a few presents for the wife to make up for late nights spent on the computer ). It is now much harder to get these kinds of Ada converts without a free Ada compiler. Steve (the other one (not "The Duck") )